Europe is sinking into authoritarianism. Bourgeois governments are inciting the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Militarism is accompanied by tightening border regimes. The burden of the chronic crisis of capitalism falls on the broad masses of the people.
After the outbreak of the summer uprising in France, in response to the police execution, Polish politicians tried to utilize it in their electoral rhetoric. Prime Minister Mateusz Mazowiecki (Law and Justice, PiS) said:
„President Emmanuel Macron, whom I saw this morning, had to leave the summit early to deal with the huge riots, burning cars, burning tires, broken windows, thefts, robberies and the great many crimes that are now taking place in France. Shops plundered, restaurants vandalized, police cars set on fire, barricades in the streets. Is this the image we would like to see in Poland? Would Poles want this? I think that all Poles will answer, including supporters of the opposition, that this is not a picture we would like to see.”
Pro-government media reproached the main opposition leader, Donald Tusk from the Civic Coalition (KO), for his promises after Macron’s re-election: „We will have Paris in Warsaw.” He quickly responded to the blows:
„We watch with shock scenes from brutal riots in France. And right now, Kaczyński is preparing a document thanks to which even more citizens from countries such as – and I quote – Saudi Arabia, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will come to Poland. Last year, Kaczyński brought over 130,000 citizens of such countries. 50 times more than in 2015. One will be able to get these visas easily and quickly. And they will be distributed by external companies, because there are so many orders. Why does Kaczyński target foreigners and immigrants, and at the same time wants to let hundreds of thousands of them in, and from such countries?”
Other opposition politicians also joined the discussion. Paulina Hennig-Kloska from Poland 2050 said:
„In France, protests there very often, on very different issues, take the form of street fights. This was the case with the protests in Barcelona. It was like that in the case of the Yellow Vests, it’s like that today, and it’s some kind of nature of France that I can’t understand. (…) Of course, the French state has to deal with this, because it is simply some kind of lawlessness spread on the streets and the protests cannot simply take the form of vandalism.”
How you call a shooting of an unarmed man by the police? A police execution. How you call the recognition that we, like many others, may have suffered a similar execution by the state apparatus of repression? A sense of solidarity. How you call the recognition that we do not deserve such a fate? A sense of dignity. How you call the expression of righteous anger against the state and the system by the masses united by solidarity and a collective sense of dignity? An act of democracy. The fact that Polish bourgeois politicians „can’t understand it”, „wouldn’t like to see” it and still consider it a reason to be proud, is extremely symptomatic.
Here in Poland we are witnessing the synthesis of European authoritarianisms. Populist conservatives in the spirit of Orban from PiS and neoliberal followers of Macron from the opposition speak with a common voice.
This is due to increased support for the far-right Confederation, whose program combines economic libertarianism with reactionary cultural positions. According to polls, neither the current ruling coalition nor the „democratic” opposition will probably gain a majority in the Sejm without Confederation’s votes.
Confederate leaders have already commented on this issue: Krzysztof Bosak, in an interview with TVN, assured that „there are and will not be any talks about co-governance with PiS, about a coalition with PiS.” He declared:
„We want to remove PiS from power. We are going to the elections to strengthen the representation of our voters in parliamentary politics, and after the elections there are always two paths: co-governance or opposition, and we are not afraid of either of these paths.”
A post-election coalition between KO and Confederation seems likely. This is not surprising, considering the ideological closeness of both groups and the fact that Confederation is supported by the radicalized KO electorate. However, this is extremely awkward for all those who, in the name of „defending democracy”, called for supporting the KO, citing the victims of the anti-abortion law, refugees or sexual minorities (even though the KO has never taken hard stances on these issues).
This was part of a broader international trend to promote submission to centrist neoliberals in the name of fighting „for democracy” against right-wing extremism. One of its more recent expressions is Slavoj Zizek’s article „The left must embrace law and order” in the main organ of British Blairism, „The New Statesman”.
The article mainly concerned the riots in France. Zizek believes that the situation in this country is a special case of a general situation:
„The events in France and Russia are part of a trend in Europe towards instability, crisis and disorder. Today, failed states are not only in the Global South, from Somalia to Pakistan to South Africa. If we measure a failed state by the crack-up of state power, as well as the heightened atmosphere of ideological civil war, deadlocked assemblies and the growing insecurity of public spaces, then Russia, France, the UK and even the US should also be understood in similar terms.”
He concludes that „in this general situation, the left must assume the slogan of law and order as its own.” Therefore, he appeals to the left:
„That is why it is crucial not just to dismiss the state as the instrument of domination [class domination, perhaps? – poltrot1917]. In natural disasters, public health catastrophes and periods of social unrest, progressive forces must try and seize state power and use it, not only to calm people’s fears in times of emergency, but also to fight those fears – racist, xenophobic, sexist, anti-progressive – artificially concocted to keep populations in check.”
But this is a long-term strategy; what to do now? Żiżek warns:
„in France today, where violent rebellion is unlikely to end with any kind of progressive settlement for the wretched of the Earth. If law and order are not promptly restored, the final outcome may well be the election of Marine le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally party, as the new president.”
And later, after scare-mongering about fascist armed uprisings, he throws up his hands:
„Is our only choice now between parliamentary elections controlled by corrupted elites or uprisings controlled by the hard right?”
So for now, to stop the extreme nationalist right, you have to follow the cosmopolitan neoliberals (preferably for Żiżek, while implementing the program of the former).
This policy was de facto implemented by the Left, which lagged behind KO and for four years was unable to devise its own independent policy. Of course, in the name of „defending democracy”. Left’s politicians are now outraged by the proposals for a coalition the opposition with the Confederation; Adrian Zandeberg promises:
„We will not form a government with the extreme right. Confederation is not a lesser evil, it is a greater evil. These are the Taliban who want to limit women’s rights, who hate women. They want to put our sisters, our girls in prison for terminating pregnancies. The Confederation are extreme nationalists, these are people with economic ideas straight from the 19th century”.
But now it’s too late to protest. If the opposition is to govern, it will be in alliance with the Confederation. This is how the fight for democracy together with neoliberals ends – with a democracy „without Jews and homosexuals.”
In both Poland and France, the rise of the reactionary right is now taking place through the radicalization of the petty-bourgeois electorate of the party of the neoliberal center, driven mad by the chronic crisis of capitalism.
The consequence of this is the reduction of the ideological distance between the neoliberal center and the extreme right. Macron and Le Pen, Tusk, Morawiecki and the Confederates – all singing the same xenophobic, militaristic tune in one choir. They all call for policies whose implementation would require increasing the repressive power of the state and limiting the democratic rights and freedoms historically won by the proletariat. The strengthened apparatus of repression is ultimately always used to break the resistance of the working class and other people working and exploited by the ruling bourgeois class.
Thus, the Marxist thesis about Bonapartism as a necessary form of the bourgeois state in the era of declining capitalism remains valid. This is what Marx wrote about the Bonapartist state after the fall of the dictatorship of Napoleon III in „The Civil War in France”:
„In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the savior of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power, apparently soaring high above society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. (…) [Bonapartism] is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the state power which nascent middle class society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital.”
The fact that Bonapartism is the only form of bourgeois state possible at the present time does not mean that there is only one possible form of Bonapartism. Its national forms are determined by the internal relationships of forces between classes and the place of a given country within international capitalism, in the international division of labor. Capital flows and changes in international and national class power relations force the evolution of Bonapartist forms.
Depending on needs, the Bonapartist state can use various proportions of sticks and carrots – from Macron’s state-of-emergency neoliberalism to the „redistributive” authoritarianism of PiS (which nonetheless secures profits of capitalists – as shown by the increase in the Polish Gini coefficient). When all else fails, one can always wave the saber and justify any moves as „defense of the homeland” (and in fact serving the interests of armament capital and fighting for the spheres of influence of competing imperialist camps); in this respect, the Polish opposition goes even further than the government, which is one of the most ardent warmongers in NATO.
Social-democracy remains the handmaiden of Bonapartism. This is demonstrated by Żiżek’s reactionary stance; this is demonstrated by the Left dragging behind the „democratic” neoliberals; this is demonstrated by the Swedish deportations of Kurdish and Turkish democrats at the request of the Erdogan regime, in the name of NATO cooperation in „defending democracy”; this is demonstrated by the participation of social-democratic parties in militaristic propaganda; this is demonstrated by the accession of social democratic governments to imperialist war alliances; in short: this is demonstrated by the sacrifice of the democratic gains of the people in the name of „defending democracy”, in the interest of the ruling bourgeoisie (there is a precedent for this: His Majesty Napoleon III considered himself a „socialist”). These gains can only be defended by a workers’ movement independent of the bourgeoisie, which consciously fights against the political, social and economic oppression of the capitalists.
After the collapse of the 1848 revolutionary wave in Europe and the victorious coup of Louis Bonaparte, the great revolutionary socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui wrote from his celli:
„The elimination of socialism will entail the extinguishment of the popular flame throughout Europe, which will plunge into gloomy silence and darkness, and the lid of the past will slam shut over our heads.”
Blanqui’s prophecy came true several times, and each time the failure or crisis of socialism resulted in Europe sinking under a wave of apocalyptic reaction. As capitalism rots, humanity is paying an increasingly higher price for the victories of reaction. As capitalist society sinks into terminal contradictions, an alternative stands before the working class and all working people: socialism or barbarism!
iBlanqui L. A. „Wybór pism”, KiW, Warsaw 1975, p. 191. (5-9 VI 1852)
VOLLHANDFRÜHLING 